3 massive volcanic eruptions light up Jupiter's moon IoArs TechnicaJupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system, so it's not a shock that astronomers captured several eruptions while their telescopes were trained on the satellite. However, the three eruptions were uncommonly massive and occurred within the span of a couple of weeks — eruptions of this class are only thought to occur every other year, on average. Researchers may be able to glean enough from these images to help us get to the bottom of a couple of Ionian mysteries.

ELEMENTS: Unconventional HydrocarbonsGS
The August issue of Elements magazine (volume 10, issue 4) is in press. Unconventional hydrocarbons, such as gas and oil shale, oil sands, and heavy oil, can now be exploited more effectively and economically. This has stimulated exploration and exploitation on a global scale and has led to a new economic and environmental landscape in energy matters. Exploiting unconventional hydrocarbons requires additional technology, energy, and capital compared to the industry standard. In this thematic issue, Guest editors David Cole and Michael Arthur address the geologic and geochemical nature of these resources and their impact on global socioeconomics and the environment.

Current Geochemical Society members can access this issue now via the Elements online archive using your email address (UserID) and member number (Password).

Employers: All jobs posted in the Geochemical Career Center are cross-promoted through Facebook, Twitter and right here in Geochemical News.

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Water's reaction with metal oxides opens doors for researchers University of Wisconsin-Madison A multi-institutional team has resolved a long-unanswered question about how two of the world's most common substances interact.
In a paper published recently in Nature Communications, Manos Mavrikakis, professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his collaborators report fundamental discoveries about how water reacts with metal oxides. The paper opens doors for greater understanding and control of chemical reactions in fields ranging from catalysis to geochemistry and atmospheric chemistry.

How to predict brown carbon's effect on climateFuturityResearchers have uncovered key attributes of "brown carbon," the particles from partially burned wood, that play an important role in warming the atmosphere.
"We found order in the chaos," says Rawad Saleh, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of the study. "Now we have this framework that unifies the seemingly discordant results reported by various research groups: The warming effect of brown carbon depends on the conditions under which it is produced."

7 tiny grains captured by Stardust likely visitors from interstellar spaceUniversity of California, BerkeleySince 2006, when NASA's Stardust spacecraft delivered its aerogel and aluminum foil dust collectors back to Earth, a team of scientists has combed through the collectors in search of rare, microscopic particles of interstellar dust.
The team now reports that they have found seven dust motes that probably came from outside our solar system, perhaps created in a supernova explosion millions of years ago and altered by eons of exposure to the extremes of space. They would be the first confirmed samples of contemporary interstellar dust.

Climate conundrum: Conflicting indicators on what preceded human-driven warmingUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure on global temperature trends for its annual report, some scientists knew that was going to be a problem. They describe a consistent global warming trend over the course of the Holocene counter to a study published in 2013.

A simple mineral has geochemical power that helps spark lifeKQED ScienceA research team in Arizona has found that common zinc ore may have a key role as a catalyst in the complex chain that must have led to the start of life on Earth. Their new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that the widespread mineral sphalerite acts as an unexpected catalyst with organic matter, adding a new power tool to the workshop that gave rise to life.